


The Sound Of Silence

by TheSadisticMunchkin



Series: 30 Days of Hamburr Challenge [6]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Aaron is actually kind of fucked up here, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bank Robbery, Bonding over death, But its like background if u squint maybe you'll see it but its not rly there, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Guns, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, Shooting Guns, This one has a lot of angst, but thats a given, i never thought i'd see the day, so is Alex, talking about death, where alex and aaron talk about death like it's afternoon tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-30 07:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6415264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSadisticMunchkin/pseuds/TheSadisticMunchkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you think we’ll die today?” Aaron wasn’t even taken aback by the question. He only stared at the man intently before shrugging. He didn’t know if today would be the day they would die but he saw it coming. He couldn’t escape that day even if it was going to be in the next few minutes or hours. He was already dead inside anyway. The sound of a gunshot piercing his brain suddenly didn’t seem so scary anymore.</p><p>“Most likely.” </p><p>Day 6 of the 30 Days of Hamburr Self-Induced Challenge of 2016</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound Of Silence

**Author's Note:**

> HOOWEE DON'T YOU JUST LOVE IT WHEN THE CHILDREN BOND OVER TALKING ABOUT DEATH!!!!!!!
> 
> It's the best way to fall in love <3
> 
> Dedication of the day goes to the LOVELY, the BEAUTIFUL, the AWESOME Zianne! Friend, you said you liked suffering, so here is your healthy dose of suffering <3

Aaron never liked hearing gunshots. 

 

He hated hearing them since he was a little kid and he hated hearing them now. The mere sound of a bullet flying into the air from a pistol was enough to make him curl up into a ball and cry. He didn’t know where this fear came from but because of it, he has always been on edge. Especially since he lived in New York City, people being gunned down in secluded areas turned into a monthly thing.

 

Then it all happened so fast. 

 

Gunshots were heard. Bodies hit the floor. Cries of children filled the air alongside the din of the robbers shouting “Everybody get down! This is a robbery!” Aaron was scared shitless. He did the first thing that came to mind, which was quickly hide behind the counter with another civilian. His heart was racing, his eyes were brimming with tears, and his hands were shaking harder than the leaves on the trees during fall. He tried to close his eyes and count to ten.

 

_ One. _

 

“Open the damn vault, bitch! Get the  _ fucking  _ money!”   
  


 

Aaron winced but he didn’t open his eyes once. 

 

_ Two. _

 

“Stop crying and fucking open the vault!”

 

Aaron let out a tiny sob before he even got to three. He didn’t like hearing criminals harass innocent civilians as much as he didn’t like hearing the same criminals fire a gun in the sky.  _ Fuck.  _ He tried to keep his sobs to a bare minimum but it was  _ so damn hard  _ when he kept hearing a gunshot every 3 minutes. This wasn’t how his day was supposed to be. He was just going to deposit money and go back home. 

 

Now he doesn’t know if he will even  _ make  _ it home.

 

Weirdly enough, Aaron didn’t feel anything else after that.

 

The robbers soon got tired of hearing everyone scream and cry around them so they ordered one of their bigger lackeys to throw them into one of the vaults. Thankfully, there weren’t a lot of people in the bank that day so they weren’t very crowded. Still. Aaron would never be able to calm down. What if one of them came in there to shoot all of them when they were done? What if they will be stuck here forever? What if they were never found?

 

What if he  _ died  _ in here?

 

“Oh  _ god _ …” Aaron finally sobbed openly and he wasn’t surprised when no one came and comforted him. All of them were pretty scared too. Why would any of them break out of their comfort zone to come and sit next to him? Besides, he sobbed openly before but those were usually in the solitude of his own room. He was always able to do this on his own. He’s been alone almost his entire life.

 

It was the price of being an orphan. You were  _ always alone.  _

 

He sat there, alone again, in the corner as he tried to ebb the flow of his tears. He curled in on himself, placing his head in between his legs, and continued to cry. He didn’t know how death felt like. He didn’t know how death looked like. He did, however, know how death  _ sounded _ like and it sounded like the blood rushing in his veins and the rapid beating of his heart in his eardrums. It sounded like the voice of his mother whom he could barely remember when he was alive in his mind and soul.

 

When did he decide that he was already dead inside?

 

Just as he was about to drift into that familiar unconsciousness, an unfamiliar presence found itself next to him and he looked up. He turned his head to the side to see a young man, no younger than 23, with a messy ponytail and chapped lips. His eyes were darting from side to side as if he was expecting something to jump out at any minute. Aaron had already stared at him for all of 10 seconds before the man turned to look at him. 

 

His eyes were a soft shade of brown but they held an edge to them that Aaron understood too well. His lips were not only chapped but swollen from being bitten too many times by worried teeth. His eyes were bigger, much more fear-stricken, this close and Aaron only noticed the way his hands were shaking just like his. The empty vault was colder than they both expected and neither of them brought a jacket. Shaking bodies were of no strange sight within the last few minutes.

 

Aaron wondered if the man’s hands were cold.

 

“Hello.”

 

“Hi.”

 

“How are you?”

 

“Not good. You?”

 

“Same.”

 

Their conversation of one to two syllable words ended in a silence. It wasn’t awkward, nor was it uncomfortable. It was merely a silence that the two shared. It was a silence that would have never happened in the first place but it was a silence that was currently happening. No one else dared to speak another word but the two of them. Aaron looked around at the other people he was with. There were children huddled in a corner for warmth, bank tellers fretting over phone calls they could have made to the police, and then there were the two of them; Two strangers sharing silence.

 

Aaron didn’t like the sound of gunshots.

 

Aaron also didn’t like the feeling of silence.

 

“Some day, huh?” More one syllable words.

 

Aaron’s gaze went back to the man who broke the silence. He tilted his head to the side and he lightly hit the wall in the process. He stared and stared for a solid minute before he replied with yet another single syllable word. “Yeah.” The man gave him what he assumed was an empathetic smile. That looked nice, Aaron thought. It was the only ray of sunshine that was able to seep into the otherwise dark void of the vault. Even if it was a sad smile, it was still nice to see.

 

A beat passed before the stranger spoke again.

 

“Do you think we’ll die today?” Aaron wasn’t even taken aback by the question. He only stared at the man intently before shrugging. He didn’t know if today would be the day they would die but he saw it coming. He couldn’t escape that day even if it was going to be in the next few minutes or hours. He was already dead inside anyway. The sound of a gunshot piercing his brain suddenly didn’t seem so scary anymore.

 

“Most likely.” 

 

The man nodded before they fell, once again, into the silence. It only lasted for a split second though before words tumbled out of the stranger’s mouth. They were words that contained more than one syllable. They were words that Aaron never thought would ever escape his own mind but here he was hearing it from someone else. They were long words, short words, words that didn’t make any sense and Aaron almost didn’t catch all of it.

 

Maybe this man was still trying to make sense of what was happening.

 

Maybe this man was trying to fill the silence with what he had left.

 

Maybe all he had left were words.

 

Maybe all they had left were each other.

 

Aaron was only able to capture the last part of his unexpected rant.

 

“I imagined death so much it feels more like a  _ memory.  _ I always asked myself  _ when will it get me?  _ In my sleep? Several feet ahead of me? By gunshot? By accident? By the pain of a broken heart? Do I run? Do I let it be? Is there a certain beat to it? Or maybe there isn’t a melody. Maybe death isn’t a symphony that the greats would ever play. Maybe death is just silence. It’s gone, a shadow in the night.

 

“Sometimes I dream of death and it feels like the end of a fireworks show. You watch the sparks fly in your heart before it flat lines. The sparks disappear and you’re left with an empty sky. Do I want that? Does any of us want that? Maybe my dreams exaggerate what death is but feeling something,  _ anything  _ could potentially be better than being the end of a fireworks show. The New Year has begun but did we even think of a resolution? Is the lingering feeling of disappointment of a wasted year going to be stuck in the crevices of your mind where you saved for a quieter time?

 

“Do you ever feel like that? Has death been such a constant in your life that sometimes it doesn’t even scare you anymore?” Aaron blinked once as silence fell over them again. He was still scared of death but not as much as he thought he was. His initial panic was pure human fear. Everyone felt it and it intensified his panic even more. Now in the stillness of the room, the occasional shuffle of feet moving the air, he couldn’t feel anything. 

 

He was afraid.

 

But he was also  _ numb. _

 

“I’m still scared of death. I’m scared of dying. But death claims its victims at random. You’ll never know when it will happen, it will just…  _ happen.  _ So the only thing I seem to do is wait.”

 

“You wait to die?”

 

“Like I’m waiting in line for a cheeseburger.” He responded which earned him a small chuckle from the stranger. “I’m afraid, god I’m so fucking afraid, but that’s normal, right? Everyone is afraid of death. I’m just… less afraid of it now only because I know it will happen eventually. Some people just can’t grasp that. You’ve imagined it. You  _ know _ it’s going to happen and you even  _ question _ how it will go. You even asked me if we’re going to die today. Unless all these questions in your head mean you’re actually afraid.”

 

“I’m not afraid.” He said a little too quickly but he deflated soon after. “I’m just… prepared.”

 

“Prepared to die?”

 

“So are you, mister  _ I’ll wait for death to claim me.  _ Maybe we can die together. It would be nice to have someone holding my hand as we go to the other side.” With that statement, he took Aaron’s hand and gave him a huge, exaggerated smile. The plastic enthusiasm actually got Aaron to smile and he doesn’t remember the last time he smiled like that. The softness of the hardened edges, the strange intimacy of the situation, and the warmth of the hand enveloped around him; what was this feeling called again?

 

_ Fondness. _

 

The moment was over as soon as it came when the door of the vault opened. As much as they joked about it just now, neither of them wanted to die this quickly. Neither of them wanted it this way but who were they to disrupt whatever the universe had in store for them? At least, Aaron had someone to hold hands with. He may not have been family or a friend, or maybe a lover, but he was enough.

 

He hoped, to him, Aaron was enough too.

 

The light was too bright for either of them to see who was outside but when he heard the words  _ all clear,  _ he found himself able to breathe again. In stepped a group of SWAT members and they all surveyed the vault before helping the hostages out. They prioritized the women and children before they got to the other bank tellers. Aaron and his not-so-silent stranger were the last ones to be taken out of the vault.

 

Aaron noticed that his stranger was still holding his hand.

 

He gave the man’s hand a light squeeze to gain his attention and he indeed looked up. His eyes were shining with unshed tears of relief as he squeezed Aaron’s hand in response. They were all escorted safely into a vacant space in front of the bank that wasn’t occupied by cars and ambulances. A few of the children had to be rushed to the hospital for injuries nobody noticed in the high of the adrenaline. 

 

Aaron and his stranger shared a shock blanket on the sidewalk as some of the officers asked them questions. When it was perfectly clear that Aaron was still in a state where he couldn’t exactly believe he was still  _ alive,  _ his stranger answered all the questions for him. He would look to Aaron for confirmation, usually for yes or no questions, occasionally but he did most of the talking. Aaron was grateful for that. He didn’t like talking to the police. They made him anxious.

 

_ His stranger. _

 

Why hasn’t he asked him for his name yet?

 

“Alex.” Aaron looked up from their still intertwined hands into the warmer brown eyes of his no longer stranger. “My name is Alex.” He stared. He didn’t know any other appropriate response  _ but  _ to stare at him. He didn’t even ask him yet. He was only planning to but his stranger,  _ Alex,  _ beat him to it before he could even say anything. Alex.  _ Alex.  _ He couldn’t stop saying the name in his head, he took it apart, put it back together, spelled it several times, yet he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.

 

After a few minutes, he finally did. “Alex.” He also found it within himself to tell him his name too.

 

_ Fondness. _

 

“We’re not strangers anymore. At least… I hope you don’t feel that way. I certainly never held hands with a stranger during a hostage.”

 

“Was this not your first time being a hostage?” Though it was dark humor, Aaron couldn’t help the small smile creeping its way onto his lips. He never met anyone like Alex before. He never met anyone who joked about robberies and made 10-minute rants about the probability of death during said robbery. It was refreshing. It should have creeped him out, that someone would speak their mind like this so openly.

 

Yet Aaron wasn’t.

 

Before Alex could reply, a police officer told them, that if they were up to it, they could go back home.  _ Home.  _ Right. Aaron forgot that he could go home now. He didn’t think it was possible he would be able to go home after the recent events but here he was. He was there on the sidewalk, sharing a shock blanket with a once stranger, and actually being told he could go home. Weirdly enough, he didn’t want to go home yet.

 

“I don’t know about you, Aaron, but I could really go for some pizza right now. Also ice cream. Shit, I haven’t had ice cream in a while. Want to split?” Alex just seemed full of surprises that day and Aaron was completely fine with being swept away by the uncertainty of it all. He was a man of careful planning and precise schedules. He almost didn’t have time for spontaneity or the unexpected. He’s had one too many surprises today, excluding the most obvious robbery and hostage.

 

One look at Alex, a mere stranger,  _ his stranger,  _  and his brain just formed two words:

 

_ Fuck it. _

 

“I have nothing else better to do.” He feigned nonchalance but Alex saw right through it. He smirked and squeezed his hand again before they both stood up. Aaron draped the shock blanket over Alex, who seemed to have a lesser tolerance for the cold than he did, and took his hand again. They thanked the officers on their way out of the vicinity of the bank and Aaron could not stop glancing down at Alex. He remained quiet this time, a silence reminiscence of the stillness of the vault they were in.

 

“Alex?”

 

“Yes?”

 

They were back to one syllable words but Aaron didn’t mind. He liked to talk less anyway. “Are you still prepared to die at any time?” Alex stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as he actually pondered the question for a second. Aaron took this opportunity to watch him in his thinking process. He furrowed his eyebrows a little bit. The hand within his own would twitch slightly as he flexed his fingers around him tighter. He even had a bit of his tongue sticking out like a small puppy.

 

_ Fondness.  _

 

_ Intimacy. _

 

Alex looked up at him this time with the tiniest of smiles. His eyes were still shining but he wasn’t quite sure what made them look so bright for a man who constantly thought about death. He lifted their intertwined fingers in between them so he could look at them closely. Aaron wasn’t wearing any gloves that day but his hands were always very warm. Alex’s hands  _ did  _ happen to be cold but together they maintained the perfect temperature. Who knew thermodynamic equilibrium could feel so intimate? 

 

_ Beautiful. _

 

“I am if you’re willing to hold my hand.” 

 

All Aaron could do was give him his most genuine smile. Now  _ that  _ was a smile he hasn’t done in a  _ very  _ long time. “Deal. As long as you pay for the ice cream.” Alex threw his head back in laughter and Aaron thought he saw the sunrise in his smile. What does he have to do to be able to see that smile every day just to brighten up his dark world? When Alex finally regained control of himself and squeezed his hand again, he realized he didn’t have to make too much of an effort.

 

Alex would willingly give it to him if he asked.

 

“You’re on.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look at them go eat ice cream and try to piece other back together <3 It's their version of riding off into the sunset <3
> 
> Comment if you wish!


End file.
